College Degree Within The State Still A Bargain

TALLAHASSEE — Despite outcries from university student leaders that they are about to be priced out of an education by tuition increases, Florida is a bargain when it comes to getting a baccalaureate.

``We have reached the breaking point,`` Tom Abrams, executive director of the Florida Student Association, said Tuesday at a press conference outside the governor`s office.

Abrams and other student leaders staged a polite protest of Gov. Bob Graham`s proposed 12.7 percent increase in 1985-86 university tuition and fees. Graham`s proposal calls for another 12.5 percent boost the following year.

But it is still less expensive for a Floridian to attend a public university in his home state than to receive a similar education in most other states.

A state resident attending Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton or the University of Florida at Gainesville, for instance, pays about $864 for a yearlong full-time course load.

Nationally an in-state student at a public university pays an average $1,126 in tuition annually.

Graham`s plan would tack on an extra $84 to $99 for Florida`s resident students, and out-of-state students would see their costs rise by a similar proportion.

But the protesters, waving 300 hand-written letters they had gathered last week at a booth on the Florida State University campus, said the governor was playing politics with their future.

``I don`t think he`s picking on us,`` Abrams said. ``I think he`s caught in a political position where he`s promised a lot of things across the state. And he can`t raise anybody else`s taxes.``

When announcing the tuition increase proposal, which would pump $12.8 million into his proposed 1985-86 state budget, Graham said Florida university students now pay only about 16 percent of the cost of their instruction.

He said this proposal would raise the students` share of their educational costs to 18 percent the first year of the increases and 20 percent the second year. The national average for students` picking up the tab is 24 percent, he said.

But the students challenged Graham`s figures.

Abrams insisted the more accurate amount for what Florida public university students contribute to their schooling is 23.7 percent. ``I would never call the governor a liar. But what I`m saying is I think he has very good people who analyze the best way to bring out the figures.``

Abrams said the Florida Student Association does agree that students need to pay a fair share of the cost of improving the state`s higher educational system.

He called for the governor to support recommendations in a January 1985 ``Tuition and Student Fees Study,`` adopted by the state Board of Regents and endorsed by the Florida Student Association. The study calls for more gradual tuition increases of around 5 percent a year.

Another fairer way to shoulder the burden of educational costs would be to look at the state`s tuition voucher plan for students attending private colleges in Florida, suggested Ed Suarez, legislative director for the Florida Student Association.

``There is no need criterion at all,`` Suarez said of the voucher program. ``For all we know, the richest person in the state of Florida could go (to school under this program.)``

In the current year, the state is spending $11.9 million -- nearly the amount that the first year of tuition increases would raise -- to pay up to $835 of the tuition of Floridians attending a private college or university. That equaled some 15,705 students last fall.

Bob Henker, director of the Office of Student Financial Assistance of the Florida Department of Education, confirmed that the only criterion for the voucher program is that one must be a full-time student with a ``C`` grade average.

Major cuts in federal assistance to students proposed by President Reagan -- including a yearly $4,000 per student loan ceiling plus elimination of loans to students whose family income is over $32,500 -- make Graham`s tuition increases the final straw, students said.

``If an education becomes a luxury, fewer will be able to afford one,`` said Linda Williams. She is a student body president at the University of West Florida in Pensacola and a part-time marketing senior who also is raising a family.

Graham`s proposal ``will have devastating effects on minority students in the state of Florida,`` said Duane Pace, president of the Florida Black Student Association.

But Robert Cox, the governor`s higher education analyst, said Graham`s plan attempts to offset the hardship of across-the-board tuition increases by boosting state student aid at the same time.

``Instead of having an educational subsidy the same for everyone, it ought to be less for the higher-income students and more for the lower-income students,`` Cox said.